What I Did on My Fall Break

No game-related activities while on my fall break. For three days my daughter and I repainted my son's bedroom. The prep time, plus running around to various DYI stores probably took two of the three days. The Soldier Room, as my kids call it, is so full of my son's stuff that there was no way I could get to my work bench even if I had time.

Not Quite Back into the Swing of Things

Life has really kept me away physically from gaming activities, but the old brain manages to keep working on things. I have put away the 15mm fantasy stuff for the time being to re-focus on other things. I've been pretty much living vicariously through other's blogs. Several bogs in particular have gotten the old juices flowing.

Archduke Piccolo
He's been posting a number of  ImagiNation-related posts, several of which involve WWII naval battles using some pretty simple rules. Maybe its time to dust off my old scratch-built 1/2400 ships and have some games. His most recent post (September 25th) has a planned campaign involving a modern revolution. What further caught my eye was that he mentioned Gow & Plastique's Little Cold War Rules. Will he use them? It would be neat to see them in action.

Solipsist Gaming
Pahoota has not posted much lately, but I certainly don't hold that against him. In 2013, he had a series of posts on set of simple jet combat rules called Our Space Age Airforce. In my search to fit a set of simple, quick and dirty jet fighter rules, I have been looking at his rules recently. The only thing is that there are very few stats for the various jets. Pahoota, if you are reading this, I'd like to get in touch with you concerning aircraft stats for your rules, or at least how you figured them out.

Cuba Libre! An Alt History Wargaming Blog
I've been following Just Jacks's blog for awhile. He has great AARs. Recently, he's been conducting air battles related to his ground campaign using some a modification of some fairly simple Battle of Britain rules. This is another set of potential playable rules to consider for jet combat.

If I can squeeze in them time, I hope to get back into the swing of things soon.

Chocobos Finished

I finally finished them. They were a somewhat rushed job, but I'm pretty happy with the way they came out. I painted the base colors and then gave them a wash of black diluted with Future acrylic floor wax. Then sprayed with a clear, flat paint. My biggest decision was how to base them. Ideally, I wanted them mounted two to a base, but it didn't look practical. So, I just left them on the washers that I used to paint them.

This more-or-less ends my work on fantasy figures for awhile. As I mention in several previous posts, I'm getting burned out on them. I hadn't planned to be painting as many figures as I did for my planned War Between the Barbarians. This is the first time you're hearing of this? I've sort of mentioned it in previous posts. Basically, I have a big box of ancient Britons/Celts that were painted up as proxies for fantasy barbarians. Since then, I've been building up fantasy barbarian units with Demonworld and Copplestone figures.  I've been thinking about selling the Celts, but before I do, I wanted to have a battle using them. 

In my old D&D world, which is the background setting for all fantasy battles I have, there are these barbarians called the Bruins that live in the northern wastes. The southern tribes have become more "civilized" by settling down, and some tribes have even set up kingdoms. The northern tribes have maintained their barbaric identities and still pride themselves for raiding soft. civilized peoples. A brutal but charismatic chieftain named Wojhan has united the northern tribes and wants to "liberate" the southern tribes from their civilized ways. He has recruited allies including Gnolls and Beastmen. The campaign is a sort of a prequel to the current setting of my D&D world. During this time, the southern Brunnic kingdoms are not yet completely independent and still maintain some loyalty to a high king. Eventually I will have at least one battle, but I'm not sure when.

Chocobos Work in Progress

I have been occupied with battling my health insurance company to pay for a least some of my hospital visit of three weeks ago. They seem to think dehydration, jaundice, and a heart arrhythmia are no big deal. Probably because of this, I've not been sleeping well lately. If I can't sleep, I might as well do something. That something is chocobo.

I was never a Final Fantasy fan, but it the idea of warriors riding large birds was sort of cool.

Source: www.creativeuncut.com

Then, there is Taarna the warrior riding on her bird-pterosaur-creature from the movie Heavy Metal:

So, I decided to make my own chocobos, but it took me a long time to start this project. I'm not breaking any new ground here. A gamer has his own avian army, which gave me some inspiration.

This is what I've done so far:

I used Splintered Light Miniatures' terror birds for the steeds. The riders are Essex Miniatures Tartar light bowmen. I had to pull apart the legs as much as I could, carve away some of the bird's body, and then use polymer clay for a saddle to get the bowmen to sit somewhat naturally on the bird. The bird's tack was made with glue-soaked paper. I should have made the reins thinner and they look pretty stiff, but I am not sure how else to make them. Knowing some about bird anatomy, I decided against having a bit in the mouth. Having a metal bit would probably break or damage the beak.

The next step is to paint them and then decide how I want to base them. I normally base my fantasy armies using the old WRG Ancients basing scheme, but the birds are pretty big and they don't really fit the 40mm x 30mm bases that are used for cavalry.

A Brief Update on Life

I went to China for the last two weeks in July. It was not a trip to remember. Worst part is that I ended up in the emergency room for two days almost as soon as I touched down in Chicago.

A perfect storm of overly oily food, food poisoning, extreme heat and humidity, and having to drink far more alcohol than I wanted or normally do (nothing like endearing macho drinking customs), led to jaundice and a heart arrhythmia due to dehydration. The arrhythmia seems to be under control thanks to IV bags of water + potassium, the liver thing might be a larger problem. They ruled out hepatitis, and the liver enzymes were back to normal by the time I left the hospital, but I go for follow ups with my doctor tomorrow. I'm hoping that it was due to my lack of a gall bladder, but we will see. Frankly, I am a little nervous.

Since I have come back to Tennessee, I have been puttering around the workbench a little, but I've had mostly odd handyman jobs around the house that needed attending. I had a further scare yesterday. I was looking for some tools in my garage and for some reason, I lost my balance and fell. I am still a little achy on the left side today.

I am not a super religious man, but I'd appreciate any thoughts and prayers you can send my way.

More Fantasy 15s

My postings on this blog have really tanked. Its not that I haven't done anything hobby related, its more a matter that I have not had the time to post things.

I've been cramming, so to speak, to finish up my 15mm fantasy barbarian project. It is never going to be really finished, but I want to get to the point of, "enough with the painting!" I am at the burn out point with painting fantasy figures, and I want to get back to 6mm and 3mm gaming (emphasis on GAMING). I think I am close to that goal. Here are my recent pieces:

Barbarian Chief on Beastman Chariot

I combined a Demonworld barbarian riding on a Khurasan beastman chariot. I've been looking for some sort of fantasy chariot for the barbarian to ride and this fit the bill.

The Scarlet Sorcerer and His Minions
These I painted up for my son. With the exception of the velociraptors, which are from Khurasan miniatures, these are all a hodgepodge of figures sitting around in my storages boxes.

Scarlet Sorcerer

His hentchmen

Mounted guards

Red Ninjas

Palace guards

Pet Velociraptors

One Post for April

The end of the semester is always crazy for me. I am wrapping up school, but seems like my kids' activities have tripled. I have been doing a lot of painting, but I don't have time to sit down and record things on my blog.

I've been working really hard to complete these fantasy figures, but I think I reached burn-out on them, and want to get back to the microarmor universe. I started a little fantasy, side project. My son Ivan has a number of invisible friends. Don't worry, he knows they are pretend. When he has a hard time going to sleep, I tell him these stories about the adventures of King Ivan and his knight friends. The stories are pretty bad, but I try to inject some sort of moral to the story. He's been goofing around with my figures and having little battles involving King Ivan's army versus the evil Red Wizard and his army of ninjas. So, I thought I would paint up some of the characters. I'm far from finished. Here is King Ivan's standard bearer:

I can't remember off the top of my head who makes this guy other than its an Italian company. My son loves penguins and wanted the king's coat-of-arms to be a penguin. I've got a trumpeter also finished and I'm still working on the king and the evil red wizard. I used to be pretty good at painting coats-of-arms onto shields and such, but my eye sight was a lot better and my hands were less shaky than now. I have some ninjas on order and once I get them and paint them up, I will take a break from the 15mm fantasy for awhile and get back to moderns.